Wireless communications devices such as cellular phones have become a part of everyday life. People routinely interact with their family and friends by talking, texting and exchanging digital images with one another.
Current wireless communications devices have a limited ability to broadcast to other wireless communications devices absent a cellular network, the internet or other wireless network. One exception is a peer to peer or ad-hoc communications network wherein the wireless communications devices communicate directly with one another.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 defines the physical layer and the media access control (MAC) layers for a wireless local area network (LAN). IEEE 802.11 has two basic modes of operation. An ad-hoc mode that enables peer to peer transmissions between mobile communications devices and an infrastructure mode in which the mobile communications devices communicate via an access point. The access point serves as a bridge between the mobile communications devices when they are out of range of one another and typically includes some type of wired communications network.
In mobile ad-hoc networks the mobile communications devices typically move about randomly and arrange themselves arbitrarily. Thus, a mobile ad-hoc network's topology may change constantly and unpredictably, preventing reliable and continuous communications between devices. Moreover, a new mobile communications device may attempt to access the mobile ad-hoc network using a different communications mode. For example, the ad-hoc network may be communicating via BLUETOOTH and the new device may attempt to communicate via radio frequency (RF). This dynamic nature of mobile ad-hoc networks may result in lost and dropped communications.
There is a need for an improved method of establishing mobile ad-hoc networks between mobile communications devices which change their positions and modes of communication constantly and unpredictably.